Cover of Chicago Reader‘s November 21, 2024 issue featuring FREE THEM ALL by artist Carlos Barberena. Credit: Carlos Barberena
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Albert Camus once declared, “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” It’s a tall order, but one perhaps made easier with a community both to support you and to come together in executing such an arduous task. This kind of camaraderie might be found at the monthly Queer Writers Club, a project of both Chicago Filmmakers and Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival, hosted by Colleen O’Doherty.
I was stunned to hear that O’Doherty had only moved to Chicago somewhat recently, considering how ingrained she’s become in the community vis-à-vis a successful, ongoing creative program. She has an attitude about getting involved that is inspiring, especially in these times when we may not only feel isolated but actually drawn toward isolation, in the process forsaking a sense of community. Now she helps to facilitate a space where it can be found, perhaps helping to keep civilization from destroying itself, one writing prompt at a time.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I moved to Chicago from Nebraska about two years ago, and part of why I moved here was wanting to get more involved in theater and film and burlesque and all these different art things I enjoy. One of the first things I did was try and find places I could volunteer at. I dunno if that’s a midwest thing—I was just like, if I help out at things, I’ll meet people, you know?
So I reached out to a bunch of places, and Chicago Filmmakers pretty immediately got back [to me] and was like, “Hey, we have this LGBT film festival, Reeling, and we always need help for it. Like, jump in on that.” And I did, and I just kind of immediately fell in love with Chicago Filmmakers as a whole, because everyone was really welcoming.
Everyone was just super nice. I loved what they were doing. Then I kind of ended up making friends with [someone on the board], but anyway, she reached out and was like, “Hey, you know, we’ve kind of wanted to create some sort of writing group, and that seems to be your background. Do you have any ideas?” And I was like, “We could do a writing club or a group or something.” So, over the course of time, Queer Writers Club came into being, and I’ve been running it, like—gosh, has it been almost two years? Wow. It’s getting up there. The Queer Writers Club went from an infant to . . . I think she might be walking.
I’d say there’s a decent amount of [Queer Writers Club attendees] that are certainly interested in the film world in some way, which makes sense. I mean, again, if you notice in the name Queer Writers Club, it’s not filmmaking per se. But that is natural [to assume that], because it’s under the umbrella of Chicago Filmmakers.
[At the meetings,] we keep it pretty informal; also, we’ve played with the format and the structure at various points. What we’re settled into—I think what it’s gonna keep being—is, basically, people show up, and I do some icebreaker kind of intros, and then we just do a bunch of writing prompts, and people write and share and talk about writing.
I’m sure every writing teacher is different, but I almost treat it like an exercise session. You have a warm-up, a main thing, a cooldown kind of thing. So for a warm-up prompt, I’ll do something very straightforward, like word association or something like that. There’s all these keep-the-pen-moving exercises you can do. So I’m gonna say a word every minute or every two minutes—write what comes to mind for that. And then you can incorporate the next word or move on to something else. You know, something like that, that just kinda gets the pen moving, so to speak. And then I love a good multistep how-the-heck-am-I-supposed-to-incorporate-these-things kind of prompt.
I’ve also sometimes done more film-based or screenwriting-based things. Like, you know, I’ll give a bunch of images and a song and all this stuff, and be like, “OK, taking all this together, what kind of movie would incorporate these things, and pitch that movie.” So we do some fun stuff like that.
Community spaces enable people to embrace their mantle as a citizen.
One of the alumni from Reeling, he had a really beautiful short film a couple years ago. His name’s Austin Bunn, and he is going to be a guest facilitator for this upcoming [Queer Writers Club meeting], which will be November 23. I’m very excited for that. He’s a wonderful artist and teacher.
We finally had our first in-person [meeting] last month. Several people showed up and have maintained friendships. I’m in a group chat that I more observe than jump in on, but everyone, you know, they’re going to movies and stuff. So I think some friendships have come out of it for some folks.
I think we’re gonna move into a hybrid-type model. We’re heading into winter—it’s gonna make more sense to do some of those online. But then, certainly, I think we’re trying to at least maybe quarterly [meet] in person. Online has the benefit of just being more accessible for folks. That’s certainly something that’s always [in the] front of my mind, too, is [that] with Zoom, you can put up captions, and if they have mobility issues, they can just jump in. I think we talked about wanting to keep some sort of online version, but I think there was a hunger for—an interest in—in-person connection.
I guess the only long-term goal I have is to maybe figure out a sustainable structure. It being a volunteer ragtag kind of setup is fun, and [it] works right now. But I think giving it a little more structure and a little more of a setup . . . As [Chicago Filmmakers moves] forward, do we make this the baby of a program manager? I don’t know what that looks like, but giving it a little more of that stability would be great. But then as far as the space, [we’re] just kind of figuring out what programming or what approach works best for folks.
Queer Writers Club Monthly; Sat 11/23, 2–4 PM, virtual, free chicagofilmmakers.org/upcoming-screenings-and-events/queerwritersclub
I feel like you’re gonna have two components going forward with times of great political upheaval or political crisis like this, where, you know, we’re very realistically looking at some infringements on rights and all these things coming down the pipe. There is kind of an emotive personal element, and I think there is a little more of what I would consider the intellectual political element. How are people going to respond? That work is going to be vital and important and central, but people need spaces where they can also just be processing feelings and just be fully human and have other people that are like, “Yeah, I know, I’m going through this,” or, “I’m scared about this.”
And so I think in that way, community spaces enable people to embrace their mantle as a citizen, by allowing them to first kind of take care, like put their oxygen mask on to then go in to do whatever they need to do.
We’re a sharing-writing-space type. I don’t necessarily wanna make that the space where I’m trying to engage something openly, politically. Again, though, it’s a very free space in terms of what people wanna write about and what people wanna say. I mean, everything’s political, but there’s no agenda, there’s no political agenda I certainly ever go in with, ’cause I don’t think that’s conducive to people being able to just use the spaces they want to creatively.
Reader Recommends: FILM & TV
Our critics review the best on the big and small screens and in the media.
Wicked is a fantastic movie musical epic that hits all the right notes and stays true to its source material.
Alice Maio Mackay’s trans slasher film Carnage for Christmas is a satisfying holiday treat.
A new addition to the Dune franchise gives an intriguing perspective on vengeance, power, and humanity itself.
Payal Kapadia’s latest film finds a refreshing tenderness and subtlety in this story of burgeoning love.
Your Monster is a tropey but enjoyable horror rom-com with perfectly cast leads.
Clint Eastwood’s legal thriller Juror #2 is a compelling moral parable.
A sturdy exhibition of photographs and objects born of Frank Lloyd Wright’s sprawling practice has opened at the Richard H. Driehaus Museum. Nicknamed Chicago’s “Marble Palace,” the elegant institution was built in 1883 as a residence. For this exhibition, five cozy rooms (originally bedrooms) serve as studies of what guest curator David Hanks calls “seven of Wright’s most important photographers” arranged in roughly chronological order. Unframed black-and-white photographic reproductions hang from wires, surrounded by ephemera from private collections and some of the storied architect’s own furniture and designed objects dating from the 1890s through 1959 (the year of Wright’s death).
Wright seated on front porch of his Oak Park home Collection of Columbia University
Front porch of Wright’s Oak Park Home, photograph attributed to Wright. Courtesy Frank Lloyd Wright Trust
Adept at self-branding and hustling, Wright was conscious of how the newish medium of photography could be used to his advantage in publications like LIFE magazine and Architectural Forum.(Wright had both artistic and editorial oversight in these collaborations.) The opening room features such 20th-century marketing materials as Wright’s proto-promotional selfies. His obsession with rectilinear aesthetics shows up even in the composition of these self-portraits and family photos. Furniture, too, worked in service of activating his vision; his famous high-backed dining chairs of 1895 created a “room within a room.” The inclusion of these and other decorative arts alongside images of the interiors for which they were intended illustrate Wright’s integrated design framework—a concept coined as “design unity.” The exhibition also traces Wright’s lifelong fascination with Japanese culture and offers new insight into his textile block houses.
Some of Wright’s own furniture and designed objects are on view. Credit: Robert Chase Heishman
Hanks is just dishy enough in this staging of the singular architect’s achievements, acknowledging that Wright’s life was, at times, plagued by misfortune. Anecdotes reference Wright’s drama-filled relationship with his mentor and on-and-off employer, the “father of modernism,” Louis Sullivan. One of Wright’s masterpieces, Taliesin (the Wisconsin version), was twice consumed by flames (in 1914 and again in 1925) and rebuilt. The 1914 fire, an arson committed by a disgruntled employee, occurred in tandem with a grisly mass homicide whose victims included Wright’s lover and her children. I visited the show on Halloween, so perhaps the tour guide’s spooky emphasis on “ax murder” was seasonal flair.
Hanks has assembled a robustly comprehensive show that explores Wright’s rigorously disciplined and holistic approach to design alongside relational maps and timelines that detail the sometimes fraught friendships between Wright and his contemporaries; the messiness of his personal life contrasts with his obsession with neatness, wholeness, and geometry. You’ll want to budget several hours to amble through the dense but not crowded exhibition and didactics, filled with equal parts history and lore.
“Photographing Frank Lloyd Wright” Through 1/5/25: Wed 11 AM-7 PM, Thu-Sun 11 AM-5 PM, The Richard H. Driehaus Museum, 50 E. Erie, driehausmuseum.org/exhibitions, admission $20 adults, $15 seniors, $10 students with ID, free for members, active military, children under 12, and on Wed from 5-7 PM
Reader Recommends: ARTS & CULTURE
What’s now and what’s next in visual arts, architecture, literature, and more.
Samantha Ege’s South Side Impresarios reminds us that no woman is an island.
The self-taught artist’s solo exhibition stems from her experimental seminar at the University of Chicago.
Scott Speh found longevity in the art world by supporting artists and honing his own singular vision.
A new book delves deep into the SS guard turned Oak Park custodian who divided the suburb.
A new Belt anthology is a welcome antidote to the mainstream media’s parachute reporting.
An Art Institute retrospective captures the vitality of this pioneering painter.
Since 2005 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
Nostalgia tells us that the “alternative” musical revolution of the early 1990s saw androgynous shoegazers, fierce riot grrrls, and punky grunge bands elbowing aside hair metal and slick pop on the charts. But this cultural shift didn’t mean local scenes were suddenly inclusive, aesthetically diverse places. Though the 90s underground in Champaign-Urbana had a few woman-led bands (Sarge, Corndolly), it was dominated by ironically macho rock (Honcho Overload, Hardvark, Steakdaddy Six) and manly “butt grunge” (my term, please share). The group Viewfinder, formed in C-U and later based in Chicago, swam against this current with an artful sound indebted to sophisticated, decadent UK artists—and during their initial late-90s run, they didn’t find an audience. A new reissue is giving them a second chance.
Viewfinder front man and guitarist Nathan Rosser was born October 30, 1974, in Decatur, Illinois. At age ten, he loved the new-wave radio anthems of Wham! and got a cassette of Tears for Fears’ Songs From the Big Chair as a gift. In high school, he was drawn to the literate tunes of Depeche Mode, XTC, and the Smiths.
Guitarist Jeff Madden was born September 7, 1973, also in Decatur. Rosser says the two of them “have a shared history of underage drinking in cornfields.” Along with his seven siblings, Madden took piano lessons and played in the school band. His brother Scott, a jazz drummer, got him into drums, and he also picked up saxophone and guitar.
Bassist Jay Gocek has the same birthday as Madden, but he was born in Franklin Park and raised in the Chicago suburb of Addison. He started messing around on keyboards in junior high, and he and two friends formed a bedroom recording project called the Puppet Club, which he calls “a sort of lo-fi Negativland meets Ween meets Front 242 bit of nonsense.” In 1992 he picked up his first bass, inspired in part by Peter Hook’s melodic playing in New Order.
“Ice Capades” is an especially good showcase for Jay Gocek’s melodic bass style.
Rosser and Madden attended the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where they met Gocek. I got to know Rosser because we were both fine arts students at UIUC, concentrating on painting. Rosser had several Champaign bands before Viewfinder, and in 1994, he briefly drummed in one with me (I owned a guitar but couldn’t play a note) and future members of Spires That in the Sunset Rise (friends of his from Decatur). After a living-room gig that ended in seconds when a guitar amp blew up, that group dissolved before even getting a name.
Rosser fell under the spell of T. Rex and Roxy Music and decided he wanted to be a singer and guitarist. At a college party, he strolled up to the most stylish guys he could find, guitarist Steve Lyon and drummer Joaquin McCoy, and asked them to start a glam-rock group. They became Secret Agent X-9, and after a few practices, Gocek joined.
Gocek’s only real band up to that point had been short-lived shoegaze act Drown, who broke up without a recording in 1993. “My lasting memory of that group was playing our last show completely out of my head on acid at a campus church while a fog machine engulfed me,” Gocek recalls. “I wondered how the hell I was going to keep it together long enough to finish the set. Our guitarist had an ancient Vox amp that had once nearly electrocuted me at practice, and it blew up about three songs in. I was never more relieved.”
Secret Agent X-9 lasted less than a year, but they laid the groundwork for Viewfinder to form in mid-1996. From the beginning, the core lineup consisted of Madden, Rosser, and Gocek. Madden started on drums but switched to guitar (after Lyon moved to Chicago), and he influenced the band’s sound with his record collection as well as his riffs. “Madden brought a lot of bands to my attention that I had never heard before, like Big Star and the Go-Betweens,” Rosser says. “I recall listening to a lot of Ride, Blur, Pulp—honestly any soppy fey British trash I could get my hands on.”
After Madden became Viewfinder’s second guitarist, the band went through almost as many drummers as Spinal Tap. The first one was nicknamed “Creepy D,” and though Rosser recalls him having “some kind of mentor vibe,” he went AWOL at a rough moment. “He ditched us on the eve of our first Blind Pig show,” Rosser says. The band begged their friend Rob Lloyd (who drummed in Bantha) to step in, and he learned their whole set in two days in Creepy D’s basement, where they were still rehearsing.
“This was around the time one of Creepy D’s housemates stole my first amp and his dog left a giant deuce in front of my amp in the practice space,” Rosser recalls. Drummer Jeff Garber (from multifaceted emo band Castor) eventually took over from Lloyd.
At the time, the Blind Pig was the best club on the Champaign indie circuit (I saw Mazzy Star and Unrest there), and Viewfinder opened a show at the Pig for the legendary Brainiac in November 1996. “Our friend Faiz Razi recorded the Brainiac show off the soundboard and released it on [the Brainiac rarities compilation] From Dayton Ohio in 2021,” Madden says. “Brainiac pretty much blew us off the stage.”
Viewfinder didn’t suffer from a shortage of gigs in Champaign-Urbana. They played the usual house parties and bars, plus annual festivals such as the Band Jam. Toward the end of their time downstate, they opened for indie bands Holiday, Braid, Sarge, and Acetone, among others. But they still felt like outsiders. “We were different sounding from the Champaign scene at the time—everything was so RAWK,” Madden says. “We loved guitar pedals that weren’t distortion. Anything that created emotion in the music that wasn’t ‘I am going to rock your ever-lovin’ brains out.’”
“I Just Wouldn’t” employs several guitar pedals that aren’t distortion.
Viewfinder captured their nuanced sound on their lone album, The Stars on Ice. They’d signed to the local Mud Records, founded by Geoff Merritt, who also ran a label called Parasol and its associated distributor. (He handled many UK imports, which made him a good fit for Viewfinder.) The band recorded the album in early 1997 at Private Studios in Urbana with Brendan Gamble (drummer of the Moon Seven Times) and released it in May of that year.
The first track from The Stars on Ice, “Zero Coupon,” sounds like a mission statement: arty jangle turns on a dime into urgent postpunk topped with Rosser’s dour, New Romantic–style vocals. On “Night’s Life and the Morning’s After,” Gocek’s supple bass, Madden’s shimmery post–Cocteau Twins guitar, and Rosser’s glammy but gloomy vocals invite comparisons to the Chameleons and Pale Saints. “I Wouldn’t Go Out With Me Either,” with its clubby drum-machine beat and synths and Rosser’s self-deprecating post–Magnetic Fields lyrics, sounds like it could’ve charted in the UK alongside Pulp or Electronic. Music mag The Big Takeover gave The Stars on Ice a glowing review, while the Daily Illini at UIUC was, as Madden puts it, “catty.”
The opening track of Viewfinder’s only album, The Stars on Ice
Before a small east-coast tour to promote the album (at one gig, the audience consisted entirely of Rosser’s brother and his wife), Viewfinder brought aboard yet another new drummer, Champaign-Urbana native Rebecca Rury. When the band moved to Chicago in summer 1997, renting a house at Whipple and Waveland, she stayed behind. They returned to C-U later that year to play with Rury at a beloved annual cover-band extravaganza called the Great Cover Up (where they appeared as Wham!).
Viewfinder hoped more people in Chicago would appreciate their Anglophilic leanings, and they hit the ground running—soon they’d landed gigs at Lounge Ax, the Empty Bottle, and Metro. The band’s next drummer, Kamran Sullivan, joined in late 1997, and Viewfinder recorded at Kingsize Sound Labs with Mike Hagler.
“Our poor drummer ended up paying for about a third of the Kingsize session of three songs, even though he only played on half of just one song,” Madden says. “I think someone still owes him for that!” On the other tracks, they used a drum machine. Unfortunately, they didn’t release the recordings at the time.
One of the previously unreleased tracks that Viewfinder recorded at Kingsize in 1998
Rosser remembers Viewfinder being met with skepticism at a Fireside Bowl gig where they ambitiously brought along a cellist (who only stayed in the band for a few weeks). They felt out of step with their musical surroundings, even in Chicago. Viewfinder dissolved when Rosser moved to Los Angeles in 1999.
Madden, Gocek, and old pal Lyon (who’d rejoined Viewfinder on keyboards after their move) carried on as Good Robot. That quickly fizzled out, though—they didn’t have a singer, and they were too spread out around Chicagoland. Gocek is now raising a family in Evanston and working as a graphic designer. Madden still lives in Chicago, where he holds down a job in the mortgage business and plays keys, guitar, and baritone sax with the Joynt Cheefs. Rosser is in Pasadena, where he works for a poster company and continues to pursue his early love of painting.
Twenty-five years after Viewfinder broke up, though, Rosser was approached by an old fan, Jake Burkhart, who now runs a boutique vinyl reissue label called Castle Danger Records. A deluxe two-LP version of The Stars on Ice came out November 19, and it includes four bonus tracks: the three unreleased Kingsize tunes as well as a demo.
“I always felt that the vision we had for our songwriting, and the unspoken mission we shared as a band, was representing influences and styles not particularly fashionable at the time,” says Rosser. Here’s hoping now is a better time for Viewfinder. Personally, I’m pulling for a reunion.
The radio version of the Secret History of Chicago Music airs on Outside the Loop on WGN Radio 720 AM, Saturdays at 5 AM with host Mike Stephen. Past shows are archived here.
Miniatures by Margie Criner and Itty Bitty Mini Mart Credit: James Hosking
Do you rent an apartment in the city? The Chicago Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance (RLTO), first approved in 1986, outlines the legal rights and responsibilities for landlords and tenants in the city.
What does the RLTO apply to?
The ordinance applies to most rental properties located in Chicago, including units operated under subsidy programs from the Chicago Housing Authority and the Illinois Housing Development Authority. Notable exceptions to the RLTO include units in owner-occupied buildings with six or fewer units and most units in hotels and motels, dorms, and shelters.
Cook County has its own version of the RLTO, which applies to apartments, including mobile homes and subsidized units, in suburban Cook County. It does not apply to units in Chicago, Evanston, or Mount Prospect.
Chicago’s ordinance requires that a summary copy be given to prospective tenants. It should be attached to written lease agreements or given to tenants with oral rental agreements.
What are the tenant’s rights and duties under the RLTO?
Tenants are responsible for testing and installing batteries in smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, notifying building owners in writing of maintenance needs, and keeping the unit safe and clean.
If your landlord fails to respond to a maintenance request within 14 days, you can withhold money from your rent payment that “reasonably reflects the reduced value of the unit,” beginning on the 15th day and continuing until repairs are completed. You can also have the repairs completed yourself and deduct up to $500 from that month’s rent or file a lawsuit in court.
You have the right to terminate your lease at the end of the 14-day period when a serious issue renders your unit uninhabitable. In these cases, your landlord must return any prepaid rent and security deposits plus interest. In cases of fire, tenants can move out immediately, provided they notify the landlord within 14 days, or stay in the unit with reduced rent.
If a tenant wishes to move prior to the end of a lease, the landlord must make an effort to find a new tenant at a fair rent. But tenants are ultimately responsible for rent and the landlord’s cost of advertising.
Tenants should not change the locks on their units without first notifying their landlord. If they do change the locks, tenants are required to provide their landlord with a new key.
What are the landlord’s rights and duties under the RLTO?
Landlords are required to inform tenants of the property owner or manager’s name, address, and telephone number; alert tenants in writing to impending foreclosure proceedings; tell tenants about any code violations that occurred within the last year; and generally maintain the rental property.
Landlords must also give two days’ notice that they plan to enter your unit for maintenance, except in cases of emergency.
If you’ve lived in your apartment for fewer than six months, your landlord must give 30 days’ notice before they terminate month-to-month tenancy, decline to renew your lease, or raise your rent. If you’ve lived in your home between six months and three years, your landlord is required to provide 60 days’ notice. And tenants who’ve lived in a unit for longer than three years are guaranteed 120 days’ notice under the RLTO.
At the end of your lease, your landlord is required to provide an itemized statement of any damages before deducting money from your security deposit. Any remaining portion of the security deposit and accrued interest must be returned within 45 days of moving out or within seven days in the event of a fire.
Landlords may charge a monthly late fee of $10 on rents under $500, plus an additional 5 percent per month on the part of rent that exceeds $500. Before terminating a lease for failure to pay rent, property owners must notify tenants in writing and give them five days to pay back any rent. You cannot be evicted without a court order or if your landlord accepts any form of late rent payment.
Your lease can only be terminated for purported violations after your landlord has notified you in writing of the specific actions that violated city law or the rental agreement and given you ten days to remedy the situation.
It’s also illegal for landlords to lock out tenants under any circumstance. Landlords are subject to fines between $200 and $500 for each day a lockout continues.
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Chicago rapper Recoechi (back row, center) recently started working with Closed Sessions, and he brought friends and family to the label’s anniversary party to hype up his set. Credit: Mark Braboy for Chicago Reader
Since its inception as a multimedia project in 2009, local label Closed Sessions has become a shining beacon for Chicago hip-hop and independent rap across the midwest. On Thursday, October 24, hundreds of fans from across the city and beyond gathered for the label’s 15th anniversary at a concert that cofounder Alex Fruchter, aka DJ RTC, had put together at Avondale Music Hall.
The event celebrated not only Closed Sessions as an enterprise but also underground hip-hop as a culture. The headliners were two longtime collaborators, DJ Muggs of Cypress Hill and New York rapper Meyhem Lauren. (One of the last interviews posted on Ruby Hornet, the hip-hop blog Fruchter cofounded in 2008, was a 2018 Q&A with Meyhem Lauren.) Closed Sessions mainstays Defcee, BoatHouse, GreenSllime, and SolarFive also rocked the evening, and south-side rapper Recoechi, the label’s newest act, delivered a soulful set that doubled as a coming-out party.
Recoechi released the single “Cake” on Closed Sessions just a few days after October’s party.
Last month’s celebration also recognized the label’s evolution. Fruchter launched Closed Sessions with Michael Kolar, founder of the defunct Soundscape Studios (reopened under a new name by Classick Studios in 2023), and in the years since, it’s grown from a content hub into an independent multimedia brand and cultural curator that includes not just a record label but also an event and production company.
“I mean, at the heart of it, it’s still a label, but what a label is has changed so much,” says Fruchter. “It’s an extension of me at this point, of who I am—a DJ, collector, writer. So it encompasses the [live interview and dinner series] Legend Conversations with Dave Jeff and encompasses these events and shows. At the heart of the day, though, it’s making vinyl, putting out music, signing artists, and helping get the world to care about them.”
Label cofounder Alex Fruchter, aka DJ RTC, at the Closed Sessions 15th-anniversary party in October Credit: Mark Braboy for Chicago Reader
The house that Closed Sessions built is home to a stacked roster that includes some of the midwest’s most gifted hip-hop artists. Over the years they’ve helped lay groundwork for the likes of Chance the Rapper, Vic Mensa, Jamila Woods, Mick Jenkins, and Femdot.
Chicago group Mother Nature have been working with Closed Sessions for years, most recently on this month’s EP Caps n Stemz. “Closed Sessions is Chicago. It’s very eclectic. It’s real MCing, it’s real rapping, it’s real music,” says rapper TRUTH, half of the dynamic duo. “So for us, when it came to connecting with any kind of independent entity outside of ourselves to grow with, it made sense to be with them.”
Longtime Closed Sessions artists Mother Nature released an EP through the label this month.
Closed Sessions thrives because its foundation is the network of relationships Fruchter built during his years blogging at Ruby Hornet. He was part of a nationwide rap-blog community, maintaining external relationships with artist managers and publicists and internal relationships with his writing peers. He was one of the first curators in Chicago who would write about an artist and organize an event around them.
“No one really was doing this blueprint I was able to put together, where we’re covering the artists, then we’re doing the party,” Fruchter says.
Beginning around summer 2008, he set up the first Chicago shows for online rap phenoms such as Action Bronson, J. Cole, Mac Miller, Danny Brown, and Yelawolf. In June 2009, he began his partnership with Kolar, which turned out to be vital to establishing the Closed Sessions community.
Closed Sessions documented Action Bronson’s first visit to Chicago in November 2011.
“I was just at Soundscape all the time and asked Mike to master my mixtape, and I went to pay him,” Fruchter recalls. “He was like, ‘So you could pay me now, and you could just pay me for five hours. But how about this? You need a studio. I’ll do anything you want. You can use it whenever you want, but you use just my studio.’ To stay in business as a studio, he needed to advertise. So he got free advertising through Ruby Hornet, because I’m taking pictures. Remember, this is before Instagram. Those parties—people will come to the party, and then the next day they’re going to Ruby Hornet to look at the photos. Those are some of our most popular posts. So it’s creating this community, and I think that’s really how the network built.”
Closed Sessions began as a project of Ruby Hornet where Fruchter and Kolar would invite rappers to record at Soundscape. The name “Closed Sessions” came from their first experiment, a July 2009 visit from New Orleans independent rap legend Curren$y. He came to Chicago for a show, and while he was here, Ruby Hornet had a cameraman film him at the studio. Kolar recalls Curren$y making only a few simple requests: “Yo, all I want is a lot of weed and the lights dimmed and the session closed.”
Kolar says Ruby Hornet’s livestream and mini documentary of Curren$y’s studio session gained a lot of traction online at a time when other national blogs were being hit with takedown notices for sharing major-label content. Ruby Hornet succeeded with original content, and that was the dawn of Closed Sessions.
Ruby Hornet footage from Curren$y’s “closed session” in 2009
“It’s like, hey, let’s start bringing in other artists,” Kolar says. “Alex was a DJ, and he had a residency at Lava Lounge, like a monthly thing. So he started bringing out different artists to come and do a set at his monthly residency—and then come to the studio. And for whatever reason, we were like, the Curren$y model is best. Keep all the bullshit out. Close the session and let the artist curate an environment that they like. Just to make a closed, private space for artists to be artists and to let their guard down and let the camera and the readers kind of peek into their creative process.”
By creating and owning their own content, Closed Sessions helped secure a revenue stream. “I think an important lesson was definitely the value of our content,” Fruchter says. “We licensed Closed Sessions Vol. 2, which we released in August 2012 and I think was our best compilation, and it was two years’ worth of monthly sessions.” That summer, Fruchter licensed Closed Sessions’ documentaries to MTV2, which aired them on the Sunday video-countdown show The Week in Jams (a rebranding of Sucker Free).
One thing that’s always helped Fruchter seal the deal is the power of showing gratitude, which his father taught him growing up. “My dad always told me, early on, if you just say thank you to people, you’ll be ahead of the game,” he says. “Because a lot of people don’t even come back to say thank you.”
Closed Sessions’ unofficial introduction to the rest of the rap world arrived in March 2010 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Fruchter rented a mansion and invited rising acts and veteran rappers from Chicago and across the country to come hang out and record music together. Word of mouth quickly turned the house into a hub, and artists Fruchter hadn’t even contacted started showing up: Paul Wall, J. Cole, Killer Mike, and more. A selection of the sessions would become the 2011 compilation Closed Sessions: ATX.
Longtime Closed Sessions producer BoatHouse recalls that momentous occasion. “Bun B, Curtains, DJ Babu, Freddie Gibbs, Fashawn—like, they’re inviting as many people as they can to this mansion to just record. That was the essence right there. We rented this mansion—who knows what could come from this, but producers come to the mansion and hang out, and then you never know who’s gonna roll through and just make music. That was a true forming of that network, a really pivotal forming.”
Part of the crowd at the Closed Sessions party Credit: Mark Braboy for Chicago Reader
Many of these artists were Fruchter’s friends and people he genuinely believed in, but he had another major motivation too: he’d made a decision to be mindful of the lyrical slant of the music he was distributing, so that he could stand behind it. This meant a lot at a time when Chicago drill had the nation by the throat.
“These were my friends and contacts,” Fruchter says. “So that’s my starting point. But the other part of it is just making a conscious effort to be authentic and be serious about karma and messages being put into the world. And I just kind of felt like, if I’m gonna run a record label, it should be things I can actually relate to myself. As a Jewish person starting a hip-hop label, I wanted to release music that I felt good about, that didn’t feel exploitative.”
Defcee and Closed Sessions producer BoatHouse released this album in 2022.
Closed Sessions rapper Defcee trusts Fruchter’s taste. “When it comes to his ear for talent, he’s always the first one to pick it up and pull it under his wing,” he says. “And I also think he loves rappin’-ass raps. He’s a hip-hop head through and through. It’s only natural that somebody like Alex, who’s been trying to make a label in Chicago happen for so long, saw that there was a lane for it here.”
Another Closed Sessions artist, Cleveland rapper and producer Kipp Stone, appreciates that the label provides supportive infrastructure he’d otherwise have to build himself. “I’ve always looked at it like me having to work a job, like just a nine-to-five job, while pursuing a rap career,” he explains. “I could be doing that, or I could be running the streets, you know. It’s kind of like that same balance, at least as far as time is concerned. And I think they just understand it. And whenever you sign, or when you tap in with them, there is a plan for real. You just got to stick to the plan.”
Kipp Stone’s most recent Closed Sessions album
Recoechi sees Fruchter as having transcended his status as an outsider to the culture. “He’s an example of how hip-hop has no bounds to what color you are,” he says. “A dude like me, who works in the community—and experiences racism all the time—I never thought I’d be working with a white guy this close, where I trust him with my intellectual property. I trust his discernment because I know he respects hip-hop, and he gonna say if this shit booboo or not. Alex real picky with what he like, and I love that about him—he’s really a fan of this shit.”
Recoechi onstage at the Closed Sessions party in October Credit: Mark Braboy for Chicago Reader
When I ask Fruchter if he’s “living the dream,” he answers both ways.
“Yes and no,” he says. “In some regards, 100 percent I’ve lived things I only dreamed about. I was on a boat with BoatHouse, Kweku Collins, and Quentin Tarantino. Those are crazy, crazy experiences. Being able to get booked to play in Thailand and then go around the whole country, meeting the people I’ve met, going from wanting to be in the studio to running a label. So yeah, in that case, definitely living the dream. At the same time, it’s incredibly difficult, and it’s a grind. I’m not sitting here, like, ‘Everything is awesome!’ I’m content, you know. I’ve done a lot, but this industry is very much like, ‘What are you doing right now?’ So I almost don’t even have time to sleep.”
Despite the realities Fruchter has to deal with running a multifaceted record company, he’s still a hip-hop lover first—and when I catch up to him at the Closed Sessions celebration, he’s gleefully excited that one of his favorite DJs of all time is performing.
“I’m fucking stoked that DJ Muggs is playing my label’s 15th anniversary, because I wore out the Cypress Hill CDs,” he says. “I wanted to be in Cypress—like, I wanted to be a member of that group. I pretended to be B-Real all the time. So there’s part of me that’s just like, ‘Man, this is awesome,’ and would be happy if no one comes. But then there’s the real part of me that’s an adult, that’s like, it also has to make sense.”
Fruchter’s longtime friend Andrew Barber (they were classmates at Indiana University Bloomington in the early 2000s) founded the Chicago-based rap blog Fake Shore Drive in 2007. “In the beginning, Fake Shore Drive and Ruby Hornet were the only ones that were doing it,” Barber told Reader writer Leor Galil in 2017. “I learned a lot from Ruby Hornet and Alex and what those guys did early on. They worked hard, and they made me better.”
I ask Barber what Closed Sessions means to Chicago hip-hop today, after 15 years. “They always did good work, always put out quality content, thoughtful content, stayed on brand, stayed on message, and really celebrated just hip-hop, not the BS around it,” he says. “Good music. You know, the essence of hip-hop. I think that’s what, to me, Closed Sessions and Alex always represented—the essence of hip-hop and continuing to build on that legacy.”
If we’re all the heroes of our own stories, that’s generally as it should be. Such a belief is often what motivates us to shape our lives and find meaning in them. How someone might think otherwise and how itcan be corrected is the primary concern of Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown.
Based on Yu’s book of the same name, it doesn’t so much rewrite a tired premise as attempt to dissect how such premises came to be, and how they sometimes keep people from stepping out of their designated places. If the show isn’t quite a scathing indictment of assimilation and the racist expectations therein, it at least makes its emphasis on the comedic murder mystery a fun, intriguing ride, as waiter and aspiring actor Willis Wu (Jimmy O. Yang) struggles to step into the spotlight of his own life.
In the proud tradition of “careful what you wish for,” Willis proclaims his desire to become something besides the background character in someone else’s story just in time to witness an abduction, and he’s quickly pulled into a police procedural that has ties to Chinatown crime lords and his brother’s mysterious disappearance 12 years ago, complete with Law & Order-esque flourishes. There’s a whole lot to dissect in how someone like Willis is seen—or more often, not seen—in your stereotypical crime drama.
Produced by Taika Waititi, Interior Chinatown has much of his signature tongue-in-cheek flourishes, as it also satirizes cop shows and the roles Asian Americans typically occupy in pop culture. Its ambitions don’t quite live up to what Yu accomplished in the source material, which had the benefit of not only exploring the interiority of its setting, but the spaces its characters were restricted to with a delicately savage touch. It’s a tough transition, taking that approach to an onscreen space, but Yu (who is also the showrunner) makes it riveting. TV-MA, ten 35–45-min episodes
Hulu
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“The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020,” which opens November 9 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, as with so much of our lives, begins with the Internet. Specifically, with MCA Manilow senior curator Jamillah James, who observed the Internet’s effects on artistic practices in the early 2000s, and who organized the show with assistant curator Jack Schneider.
In 2010 James was living in New York City and observing two trends in the visual arts: the breakdown of traditional painting and the rise of “surf clubs,” or collaborative models of working in online spaces. This moment felt, to James, like another turning point in the long history of painting’s evolution in response to new technology. Just as artists had done upon the introduction of photography in the 19th century, or video in the 1960s—in the 21st century, prompted by the Internet, they were once again reconsidering more traditional forms.
Curator Jamillah James, Credit: Maria Ponce
The idea for the exhibition became more real in 2020, when it was originally planned for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, where James was working. The COVID-19 pandemic foreclosed that possibility, but that moment too felt significant as James observed artists experimenting with NFTs and AI.
Now the culmination of James’s decade-and-a-half-long consideration of the relationship between painting and other technologies has culminated in “The Living End.”
It’s a show that James says is “both of and about painting.” It reconstructs the longer history of how artists have responded to computers, cameras, and television, as well as, more recently, social media and automation, and how they have incorporated these technologies into their painting practice, adopted their aesthetics, or used them to grapple with the history of painting itself. Eighty percent of the works on view are of the titular medium, painting, but video and performance are also present because the real undercurrent of the show is technology as art’s inspirational “spark.”
“The Living End”will be organized thematically and chronologically, beginning with work made with and about early computing technologies, before moving through work in dialogue with television, the televisual, and performance and video.
For James this is the heart of the exhibition and, she expects, is what will surprise audiences the most. “There is a long history of artists working in performance and video having a lot to say about more traditional forms and the hierarchies [of art] that are formed in the public imagination,” James notes. “When you talk to someone about art, typically the brain goes to painting or sculpture, not necessarily to performance or video.”
The show includes work by legendary artists like John Baldessari, Carolee Schneemann, and Shigeko Kubota, all of which respond in one way or another to the history and ideology of painting. Included in the show is Schneeman’s Up to and Including Her Limits (1976),a video documenting a performance in which the artist responds to the masculine legacy of “action painting” by raising and lowering herself via harness to produce a series of marks on paper. The video transforms the ephemeral act of mark-making into a durational experience while inserting the female body as a creative force directly into the space and history of painting.
From there the exhibition moves into sections on photorealism, the Internet, and automation. Work by contemporary artists such as Petra Cortright, who creates work in Photoshop and other digital image software that is then printed on aluminum, and Wade Guyton, who manipulates the surface of the canvas using an Epson printer, will both be on view.
Petra Cortright, Fox999arizona@morning-pro(version_final_Hirva).execute, 2016 Courtesy MCA
Most of the show’s practice-based themes—an interest in critique, in removing the artist’s hand, or using one medium to creatively realize another—are not new in the history of art. What will be new is the way in which James brings these ideas together in the interest of thinking specifically about the history of one of art’s oldest mediums.
The exhibition is as much in dialogue with other shows from the last few years that have focused on the relationship between art and the Internet, or art and screens, as it is to recent shows about contemporary painting. Shows such as the MCA’s “I Was Raised on the Internet”(2018), which featured some of the same works that will be on view here, or the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror: Art and The Digital Screen”(2023), come to mind.
This is a history that is very much still being written, but “The Living End” cuts off at 2020 because, as James notes, she wanted “to contend with the history that leads up to this point.”
“I’m interested in precedent and trajectory, as opposed to just focusing on the immediate present,” she says. “I didn’t just want to focus on the digital as it relates to painting. I wanted to set the stage towards that moment and locate the precedent for what is happening now. I’m trying to establish a history of artists exploring painting as it relates to new technology.”
For over a century, artists and critics have been eager to declare the death of painting. For just as long museums have mounted exhibitions to prove them wrong. James is, thankfully, less interested in entering these debates than she is in expanding how we think about the medium beyond its status as endangered.
“The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020” Through 3/23/25: Tue 10 AM-9 PM, Wed-Sun 10 AM-5 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago, visit.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/the-living-end-painting-and-other-technologies-1970-2020/, suggested admission $19 Chicago residents, $10 Chicago students, teachers, 65+, $22 non-Chicago residents, $14 non-Chicago students, teachers, 65+, free on Tuesdays for Illinois residents
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Medical students everywhere will likely feel vindicated at how their vocations’ unique struggles are rendered uncomfortably accurate in director Jason Park’s debut film Transplant.
Park grew up in Albany Park, and his subversive and nail-biting film, although set in New York City, was partially filmed in Chicago. It screened in the New Director’s Competition at this year’s Chicago International Film Festival with Park and others in attendance.
Transplant tells the story of Jonah Yoon (K-pop star Eric Nam in his debut acting role), a Korean American surgical resident in New York City. Wanting to fast-track his career and grow his skills, he requests to shadow Dr. Edward Harmon (Bill Camp), a ruthless cardiac transplant surgeon. Though brilliant, Dr. Harmon quickly reveals himself to be abusive in the operating room, craftily packaging the frustrations levied on him by former helpers as the complaints of disgruntled and untalented people who aren’t cut out for his level of genius and work. Jonah is pulled into this vortex of draconian structures and unreasonable requests, and he’s caught between wanting to thrive to support his family and community—particularly his mother, Minah (Michelle Lee)—and honoring his morals.
Nam shares that he was drawn to the ways the script explores Korean American identity in a nuanced way. “I could immediately connect with the character,” he tells the Reader. The film’s consideration of ambition and its darker sides also encouraged Nam to take on the project. “I was terrified. I had never acted before, but I love a good challenge. The film highlights the struggle to find the balance of honoring our ambition but also realizing where it can lead us astray, and I think that’s something I could also deeply relate to.”
Park found that exploring Jonah’s Korean American background allowed him to tell a familiar story in a new and heightened way. “I loved being able to use the mentor-mentee genre film as a pathway into exploring these larger cultural truths,” Park says. One of those truths is the role of the Korean American church and how it serves as a complex space that can be both a haven from the demands of work and an amplification of those same pressures.
“To be Korean American, you can’t discount the gravity of the role the church played in your formation,” Nam shares. “The church is more than just a place for spiritual worship; it’s a space for networking, forming friends, and a place to remain in touch with one’s cultural roots.” In one sequence, after a church service, as Jonah gets ready to leave, he’s ambushed by another congregant who asks him to help her daughter, as she hopes to go into the medical field. “The church establishes the context of the expectations and the hopes and the desires of not just the family, but the community itself,” says Park. “And then that, in turn, is reflected onto the family again.”
Credit: Jason Park
Transplant also subverts its genre story through the ways in which it doesn’t depict Jonah and Dr. Harmon’s relationship as a straightforward tale of a charismatic leader corrupting an impressionable youth. Jonah has resolve, and the central tensions come around as he learns how to stand his ground against Dr. Harmon in strategic ways, making defiance look like submission.
“I’m much more willing to harm myself than I am to harm someone else, and I think for Jonah, being Korean American, there’s an element of truth to that for him too,” Park shares. “He respects elders and those in charge, but what do you do when your ‘elder’ is someone like Dr. Harmon, who will become more aggressive if you don’t follow his demands?”
“From an aesthetic standpoint, I’m always motivated to come back to Chicago and make midwest characters, specifically Chicago characters, because I have such an appreciation for the culture.”
While Nam has created and worked on a variety of film projects related to his music, his time on Transplant was unique in the ways it reaffirmed for him how the creative process is a collaborative one. “My fans know I’m notoriously bad at remembering my lyrics,” he says, laughing. “As a solo performer, I can be as free as I like, and when I’m finished performing a concert, I’m done. Even if there’s a mistake, it’s already happened, and there’s nothing I can do about it then. Working on a film, though, I may be in front of the camera, but I’m a small part of this huge production. I have to relinquish control and trust the vision and the guidance of directors and the producers and all these other incredible professionals and artists in their own right to guide this little piece that I’m adding to the puzzle. It was scary to do but also cathartic.”
He jokes that his trust also led him astray at times. A commitment to realism was paramount, with medical consultants advising on the accuracy of the script’s details. In a scene where Jonah is operating using forceps, Nam recalls how Park told him that there were two ways to hold the tool, an easier method and one much harder. “He told me, ‘Jonah would do the difficult way,’ and I groaned,” Nam says. “The tool is very difficult to hold, and I practiced for hours, and then when it came time to do the scene, one of the doctor consultants came by and said, ‘Why are you holding the forceps that way? Nobody does that.’”
Another way the production challenged Nam was in how it required him to think of the art of acting as an inherently embodied one. Given that most of the film is spent in the darkness of operating rooms, actors are almost always wearing surgical masks, and for Nam, this meant he had to learn how to communicate emotion and tension with just his eyes, forehead, and eyebrows. “I think blinking and closing your eyes is such a telling way of how somebody is feeling internally . . . so I was paying attention to the speed of my blinking,” he said.
Transplant 93 min. Screened at the Chicago International Film Festival, wide release TBA
For Park, the focus on eyes was not only an exciting creative challenge but a way to pay homage to a variety of different film genres. While Transplant may remind viewers of many stories of devotion gone wrong, such as Black Swan (2010), or stories of unhealthy mentee-mentor relationships, like Whiplash (2014) or Wall Street (1987), for Park, the cinematic and aesthetic influence goes back further: westerns. “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly [1966], Once Upon a Time in the West [1968] . . . Sergio Leone is such a master of capturing these eye shots. It might not be easy to think of where a medical residency thriller connects to these films, but something I was talking about with cinematographer Eric Lin was how these 60s and sometimes 70s westerns understood the way they were able to communicate tension. And we can feel it as an audience member just through a look.”
While Transplant is set in New York City, Park wanted exterior shots of Chicago to serve as stand-ins from New York. The director and his team filmed for just one day, and he fondly recalls how they ran around all night for the shoot, breathlessly going from location to location, trying to capture as many sights as possible. The newer portions of McCormick Place serve as stand-ins for the hospital Jonah worked at, while a pivotal sequence where Dr. Harmon and Jonah have one of their first conversations takes place in the famed West Loop steak restaurant, Blvd.
Credit: Jason Park
For Park, he hopes to continue to make films in the city, in the spirit of Chicago filmmakers and creatives like John Hughes and Steve James.
“From an aesthetic standpoint, I’m always motivated to come back to Chicago and make midwest characters, specifically Chicago characters, because I have such an appreciation for the culture,” Park says. “It’s also just a beautiful city to shoot in. I hope more people come here and do more work here.”
Producer Nina Yang Bongiovi, who visited Chicago for the first time to shoot Transplant, agrees with Park. “This city is so nice,” she remarks. “The fall is especially amazing. . . . You have to shoot in the fall if you’re going to film in Chicago.”
Park also cites how growing up in the city has shaped his approach to writing characters. “Being in the midwest . . . I’ve learned the importance of code-switching and existing in different places and being able to interact and communicate in different ways to different people. I think that will always be a part of the natural fascination I have for any kind of character—how these people maneuver through their environment and how they navigate it. I personally learned and experienced this growing up Korean American in a city like Chicago.”
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